Band 243, Heft 1

We examine the link between Internet usage and political ignorance. To do so, we construct a novel index measuring individuals’ indifference with respect to political issues, which determines the degree of individual political ignorance. Our descriptive econometric analysis is based on a rich dataset consisting of six surveys of individuals covering the time period 2001–2014 and being representative for the German electorate. The empirical results show that in earlier years of Internet diffusion, there is a negative link between using the Internet and political ignorance. This link changes sign in later years of Internet diffusion. We discuss potential explanations of this observed change in the link such as information overload and the increase in heterogeneity of Internet users.

The “Bielefeld conspiracy” has long disputed the existence of Bielefeld, a (supposed) German city. In this paper, an approach is developed to test such a theory empirically by auditing officially reported population numbers, arguing that real cities would not fake these. It is shown that Bielefeld’s data, in fact, violate the Benford law, a statistical law that they should follow if they were genuine. This anomaly is found only for Bielefeld, in contrast to all other tested similar and dissimilar cities, across two decades, and with highest significance by five statistical tests. The Bielefeld conspiracy remains as the most or even only plausible explanation for these findings.

How effective are government policy attempts to boost firm exports in the short-run? We answer this question by conducting a review of 33 studies from 26 countries around the world, and provide nine findings. Export boosting policies are defined as a group of public policies that aim to increase firm exports in the short-run. These include policies such as export promotion, export-oriented public grants, public export guarantee schemes and subsidised export loans. Our review provides insights into policy effectiveness with respect to extensive and intensive export margins, as well as firms’ production function inputs and its outputs. The heterogeneity of effects across firm characteristics is emphasised, and the discussion is enriched with new evidence of spillover effects from export boosting policies. Finally, we summarise back-of-the-envelope calculations of the cost-benefit analysis and provide recommendations for future research.

The German DeZIM.panel is an online access panel that provides data specifically for topics regarding migration and integration. It includes an oversampling for several migrant groups in Germany, and thus allows specific subgroup analyses. Due to its longitudinal structure, its long-term development and the effects of sudden external events can be traced and analyzed.

This article aims to give background information of the combined business tax statistics 2016 of the Federal Statistical Office of Germany. The micro data set includes the different German business tax statistics, which are linked together (i.e. trade tax statistics, corporate income tax statistics, turnover tax statistics, statistics on business partnerships and associations as well as additional information of the statistical business register). With more than three million businesses the micro data set provides linked information on the German business structure and is available in anonymised form for scientific use at the Research Data Centre of the Federal Statistical Office.